Andrew Jefford, Financial Times

Hope takes root in Bulgarian vineyards

Andrew Jefford, Financial Times

The Bulgarians are justly proud that Dionysus, the god of wine, is ascribed Thracian origins. Icarus, though, is perhaps a more appropriate mythological emblem for the coutry’s recent wine-producing history.

Bulgarian wine was one of Comecon’s rare success stories. Not only did bottles of Mavrud, Melnik and Musket help cheer up the kitchen tables of Russia and Polish comrades during Europesn Communism’s final, low-wattage decades, but exports of wine based on international varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon also earned Bulgaria valuable hard currency in the west.The country was the world’s sixth largest wine exported by the mid-1960s and its position subsequently improved further, not least due to a reciprocal deal with Pepsi Co in the US. By 1996, Bulgaria was exporting almost 30m litres of wine to the UK. Last year, this had splumped to less than 3m litres.

What has caused the wax in Bulgaria’s wings to melt so swiftly? Devastating competition from California and the southern hemisphere has been one factor. The other has been the fatally punctilious restitution of agricultural land in Bulgaria, with each 1947 plot being handed back to “the persons who were therefrom expropriated or to such persons’ heirs by low.” Some 70% of the Bulgarian population lived in the coutryside in 1947; 75% of the population is now urban. “In my family,” says wine producer Ivan Zahariev of Stork Nest Estates, “20people have an interest in six hectares, and not one of us lives anywhere near the village. Yet to sell, everyone has to sign, and if only one person disagrees, the whole procedure is blocked. Appeals and subdivisions take up to five years.” The results, in practice, is thet many of Bulgaria’s once-bonny vineyards are now choked with weeds. Sizeable exports continue to leave the country for Russia (70m litres) and Poland (25m litres), but quality is dire, and this will not be wine anyone wants to drinks once they can afford something better.

The reality of the post-1989 struggle struck me forcefully when, on a recent visit to the country, I stayed in a drab hotel near the Greek border that had been privatised - floor by floor. The result was three different hotels in one small building, with three reception areas, each staffed all night by middle-aged women who looked as if they had hoped for more from life. The market economy, when you start from zero, is tough. The following day, I found myself in the vineyards of Bessa Valley Winery in Pazardzhik, looking around 140 perfectly tended hectares of Merlot, Petit Verdot, Syrah and Cabernet within a 300ha land plot. How difficult had this land been to acquire? "Very, very difficult," laughed executive director Alexander Kanev. "We started in 2001 and it took us four years. We had to buy from 800 owners. And in Bulgaria you can't do anything by phone - you have to touch and to see people." The Bessa Valley advantage is that it is owned by two wealthy foreigners: Dr Karl Heinz Hauptmann, co-founder of Europa Capital Management, and Stephan von Neipperg, whose St Emilion portfolio includes Chвteau Canon-la-Gaffeliиre and La Mondotte. Success is a little easier when you start from the top.

Bessa Valley produces two wines: Enira and Enira Reserva. Initially (in 2004) a lusciously pneumatic blend of Merlot with a little Cabernet, it is slowly working its way towards backbone and complexity. The 2005 vintage (the non-Reserva version is in 47 Waitrose branches at GBP 8.99) is valiant, given the rain-struck summer; but the wine will begin to come of age with the 2006. The Enira (now half Merlot and one-quarter Petit Verdot and Syrah) is brisker and more concentrated than in the two former vintages, the sweet sloe fruit dusted with Petit Verdot pepper; while the Reserva (whose 60 per cent Merlot is structured by 15 per cent each of Syrah and Petit Verdot and 10 per cent Cabernet) has liqueur-like black fruit depths, supple tannins and a dark chocolate finish. Bulgaria has always promised to do for Europe what Chile does for the southern hemisphere. A wine like this suggests that only millions of euros of investment, and a decade of land negotiation, stands in its way.It will need a conceptual revolution, too, among that small, profit-focused elite of supermarket wine buyers who at present source seven out of 10 bottles of wine drunk in Britain, and almost all its Bulgarian wine.

Finding anything Bulgarian costing as much as GBP 4.99 in British supermarkets is hard; GBP 3.99 is the usual limit and Tesco has Bulgarian wine on sale at GBP 2.75. The result is a poverty trap for suppliers. The wine in a GBP 2.99 bottle on sale in the UK cannot cost more than 25p; the other GBP 2.74 is tied up in the fixed costs of taxes, transport, dry goods and the retailer's margin. Remuneration of this order does little other than keep bankruptcy at bay. When Enira first went on sale, the strategy was to sell 80 per cent on export markets and 20 per cent domestically. In fact, the Bulgarians themselves have been prepared to pay more than export purchasers (EUR 6.50 compared with EUR 4 ex-cellars), with the result that that ratio has been reversed.

Hope, though, has not yet been extinguished in the Bulgarian coutryside and I visited two other major projects where viable land purchases have been made, plantings renovated and major cellar investmentsmade. One, called Catherina, is owned by Belvedere (a French luxury bottle-maker turned Polish vodka distiller, with capitalisation from Angostura’s CL Financial). The 2006 range of red wines from Catherina near Svilengrad is promising, with the ripeness, vivacity and tannic mass that has been palpably missing from Bulgarian reds in the UK for so long.

I particularly liked the Merlot (sterner than Enira) and the relaxed, rumpled Mavrud. The packaging of these wines for the local market, where it sells as “Contemplations”, is among the most avant garde I have seen anywhere, and they look prime contenders to shatter the GBP 4.99 glass celling when they reach the UK.

Terra Tangra, meanwhile, is the brainchild of Emil Zahariev, a winningly enthusiastic, wine-crazed Bulgarian cucumber grower who planted 20ha five years ago in south Sakar and has now assembled 300ha. My own first job 25 years ago consisted in large part of retailing case after case of Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon to the wine-crazed commuters of Surrey and I can still recall the pure, frank, winning clarity of its blackcurrant flavours back then. It’s been missing for more than a decade as the vineyards lurched back to a state of nature but when I tasted the 2006 Cabernet of Terra Tangra the quarter-century dropped away and I realised that Bulgaria is, very slowly, inching back.

A wide selection of Bulgarian wine is available in the UK from Wines of Course, 153 High St, Ongar CM5 9JD (www.easy-wine.co.uk) and in the US from Bulgarian Master Vintners, 1447 East Napa St, Sonoma, California 95476 (www.bulgarianwine.com)

Andrew Jefford is the author of 'The New France: A Complete Guide to Contemporary French Wine'.

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